Sant Jordi has finally arrived to Sydney! Since the 23rd of April fell on a Tuesday, right after Easter holidays, the Casal Català of NSW decided to put it off and celebrate it today. Like last year, they got two large stalls at Paddington Markets, with an amazing display of first and second hand books (and plenty in Catalan and Spanish!) and roses.
At midday, we decided to join them by doing a small performance with the few castellers who were not on holidays anymore. While we were getting ready, more and more Sydney citizens who had gone to the markets to enjoy the sunny day stopped, becoming a quite unusual audience. By the time the second level of the 4 of 5 started to climb, there was a large crowd watching our performance with great interest. After all, seeing people climbing on each other’s shoulders doesn’t happen very often in this side of the planet! Despite not having had a proper rehearsal for the last few weeks, the 4 of 5 clean kept a nice square shape and did not present any problems. Our canalla did a great job and we were all soon back to the ground, celebrating that the tower was completed so smoothly.
We then decided to continue with a pillar of 4. However, the amount of castellers at the pinya was not enough to make it as stable as we are used to, so the enxaneta decided to go down when she was going to start the last 3 steps. We knew that it was only a matter of getting a few additional hands, so we asked people around us whether they wanted to participate. Luckily, some did and with the new solid pinya, the pillar of 4 was easily done.
To complete the performance, we had planned to build 2 pillars of 3. Since they were meant to be done simultaneously, we knew that we would require even more people helping at the pinya. And we must say that we were positively surprised by the response of “our audience” this time: many of them stepped in and we finally got two decent pinyes giving an excellent support to two steady pillars of 3!
The performance was over, but the party continued with a nice lunch at the Gure Txoko, cooked by several of our castellers: trinxat de la Cerdanya, estofat de vedella and crema catalana. What a nice ending for a great Sant Jordi!
